At 21:00 on January 19th, Beijing time, Apple’s first head-mounted display device VisionPro officially started pre-sale. Less than ten minutes after the pre-sale started, the first batch of supplies was sold out. As Apple enters the MR market, Huaqiangbei, the “Silicon Valley of China”, is naturally indispensable for such a major digital event. On the one hand, genuine Apple products are expensive and hard to find. On some channels, purchasing fees have reached five figures. On the other hand,The price is less than a fraction of the genuine product, and the counterfeit goods called "AppleCore" are already lying on the counter of the Huaqiangbei stall owner.


Compared with the high price of the original version of US$3,499 (approximately 25,171 yuan), the Huaqiangbei copycat version is very affordable. "For domestic customers, the price is 1,600 yuan per unit, and the foreign trade price is more expensive, 500 US dollars per unit." Li Mo, the owner of a stall in Huaqiangbei, revealed to Alphabet List.

As Apple's first device to enter MR, VisionPro is full of sincerity in the materials used. According to the VisionPro bill of materials circulated online, the material cost of the headset alone is as high as US$1,509 (approximately 10,857 yuan).

However, the domestic price of Huaqiangbei's copycat version is less than a fraction of the genuine version, and the factory and dealers still make a profit, which is evident from its low production cost. "It should be a solution using a mature product on the market, and a high-imitation casing." An industry insider speculated.

As for the experience, with such a huge price gap, there is certainly no comparison between the copycat version and the genuine version, and there is even a gap between it and other competing products. Users who have tried it said that both the hardware and software are far inferior to other mainstream brands of head-mounted display products.

From the perspective of product experience alone, it is not cost-effective to buy such a copycat headset for 1,600 yuan, but if it is to "support the scene" or out of curiosity, buying it at this price can be called a "cost-effective".

Huaqiangbei is not targeting domestic individual users. "Currently, we are not accepting retail orders. We are mainly engaged in foreign trade. In order to catch up with the popularity of overseas launches, individual buyers can wait and see." Li Mo said.

On January 15, many Huaqiangbei bosses were invited to participate in a "briefing meeting". The product introduced at the meeting was a copycat version of VisionPro. At this time, there were still four days before the pre-sale of Apple VisionPro.

But in fact, as early as last year, this copycat headset called "AppleCore" had already entered the market. On January 5th, Bilibili’s up owner “Xiaochen Attack” released a review video of this product, detailing the software and hardware configuration and experience of this copycat headset.


In terms of appearance, the knock-off model can indeed look fake at first glance, but once it is placed next to the authentic renderings, even a layman can see the difference between the two: the Apple headset is equipped with 12 cameras and 5 sensors, while the knock-off version only has two cameras in the middle of the eyes; the shell of the Apple head-mounted display is made of aluminum alloy, while the knock-off model uses plastic directly, which looks very rough.

After turning on the phone, what comes into view is not the Apple logo, but a large Android, and then a 3D "VisionSE" word will appear in front of the user.After entering the desktop, the entire UI interface basically replicates the style of VisionOS in the promotional video of Apple's press conference in June last year. It is a "magically modified" version based on the Android system.

The product introduction of the copycat headset obtained by Alphabet is unclear about its hardware configuration. The seller claims that this copycat headset is equipped with "the industry's top Qualcomm Snapdragon MR chip" and the viewing experience is equivalent to a "120-inch 4K high-definition giant screen".

However, according to user reviews, the SDM710 chip (Snapdragon 710) used in the copycat model uses a 10nm process technology and was first installed on the Xiaomi Mi 8 launched in 2018. The display resolution is only 720p, which is more than an order of magnitude lower than the advertised 4k resolution.

Of course, this copycat headset is not just cheap. This copycat machine supports external storage cards up to 1TB, so users can say goodbye to "memory anxiety". If you want to upgrade Apple's Vision Pro from 256GB to 1TB, you need to pay an additional US$400 (about 2,884 yuan).

The price of the copycat version is 1,600 yuan, which is less than a fraction of the genuine product, and it seems to be quite a bargain; but if compared with other competing products, the copycat version does not even have the advantage of cost-effectiveness.


If you just want to try it out, then the PICO entry-level model NEO3, which has dropped below 1,000 yuan on second-hand platforms, can meet the needs of most novice users. If you want to go further, MetaQuest3 can only be purchased for the price of about two copycat models. If you compete with these well-known brands, copycats have almost no chance of winning.

Among high-imitation Apple products, the most popular ones are headphones, watches, and external batteries. These products are usually easy to carry and used infrequently. Huaqiangbei's copycat models can allow users to satisfy their vanity of collecting an "Apple family bucket" at a low price without affecting the experience as much as possible.

However, the VisionPro experience relies heavily on the screen, camera, and software ecosystem, and the product is not portable. For most individual users, such a copycat product is not attractive.

In fact, the target group of the copycat VisionPro was not C-end users from the beginning. In some diversion posts, sellers did not sell the product to ordinary C-end users, but looked for various channels and agents. For some individual buyers who wanted to try it out, some honest sellers even directly discouraged them in the comment area, saying that "the product is not yet ready, so it is recommended to wait and see."


Copycat Vision appearance

Although the manufacturer prices the copycat version of VisionPro separately at home and abroad, and the overseas price is much higher than that at home, according to Li Mo, the main sales market for this product is currently overseas. "Currently we are mainly doing foreign trade orders, and we just shipped a few hundred units today." Li Mo said.

As for what kind of users will buy this product, Li Mo said that some are for product evaluation, and others are for business, such as VR experience stores. "The needs are diverse and we don't know it yet, but there is a need anyway," Li Mo said.

After VisionPro pre-sales started, various digital bloggers posted "good news" on social media about their successful purchases. Some bloggers were already preparing to leave for the United States, aiming to compete for the first wave of traffic for Apple headset evaluation.

For some bloggers who have not been able to grab the first release, or who are originally curious, spending 1,600 yuan or 500 US dollars to buy such a copycat product is also a way to gain traffic.

On the overseas video platform YouTube, many evaluation videos about this fake headset are more popular than the authentic experience videos. The unboxing review video released by "UnboxTherapy", an unboxing blogger with over 25 million user subscriptions, received 640,000 views and 28,000 likes in just two days. Some users who did not know Huaqiangbei in the comment area were even "planted" and began to buy fake Apple headphones. The fake head-mounted display that attracted traffic unexpectedly became the "drainage model" on the shelves of Huaqiangbei.

In addition, although this product is currently almost exclusively for foreign trade, if domestic buyers are willing to pay for bulk purchases, the manufacturer is also willing to allocate some production capacity. "We won't do one or two, but we can do ten or more." Li Mo said. According to him, it would be no problem for the factory to "pick up a few units" and distribute them. "You can go offline to look at the samples first. If you are satisfied, you can get the goods within one or two days of payment."

The production capacity of genuine products is insufficient, and it takes at least two weeks from pre-sale to delivery; while counterfeit products are released simultaneously and can be obtained immediately, Huaqiangbei has captured the traffic of Apple headsets faster than Apple itself.

This is a routine operation in Huaqiangbei. Since the birth of the iPhone, Apple has been in love with this street on the other side of the world.

Parallel iPhones were once the “main product” of Huaqiangbei’s copycat industry. Overseas versions of iPhones flowed into Huaqiangbei through various channels and were sold to customers at low prices after the operator lock-in was lifted.

Some Huaqiangbei stall owners may have more complete Apple products than many Apple dealer stores. In 2017, former Silicon Valley engineer Scotty Allen spent only more than 2,000 yuan to buy all the parts of iPhone 6s in Huaqiangbei and assemble a brand-new mobile phone. Some netizens joked that "Cook even purchases goods from here."

The release of Apple's wireless Bluetooth headset AirPods gave Huaqiangbei a second spring. After the release of AirPods, Huaqiangbei quickly followed up and launched copycat products. Authentic products often cost thousands of dollars, which is prohibitive, but Huaqiangbei's copycat model only costs 50-200 yuan. Not only can it look fake in appearance, but it even supports functions such as "name change and positioning, pop-up window connection, in-ear detection" and other functions that only genuine products can have.

Because there are too many counterfeit goods and it is difficult to distinguish them, Apple officials even changed the after-sales policy in China in 2020. AirPods damaged during the warranty period need to be screened and identified at a repair center in China, but they can be directly replaced abroad.

This time the counterfeit version of VisionPro is released simultaneously with the genuine product. It seems to be just a common step for "Huaqiangbei Technology" to try to keep up with Apple, but it may also be the last step.


Although the shipment volume of copycat headphones is huge, the profits are relatively slim. As domestic manufacturers follow up, the survival space of Huaqiangbei's copycat headphones is gradually shrinking.

Beginning with the iPhone 15 series, the US version of the iPhone has eliminated the SIM card slot. Although Huaqiangbei has also developed countermeasures, because this solution will destroy the body structure, the process is complex and cumbersome, and will also affect the residual value of second-hand products, making "parallel import" iPhones increasingly useless.

In addition, the living space of Huaqiangbei bosses is also squeezed by the market environment and e-commerce platforms. In recent years, the consumer electronics market has been sluggish, and iPhone first-time price drops have become the norm. The e-commerce platform's "tens of billions subsidy" strategy and investment in second-hand recycling platforms have further compressed the profit margins of merchants in Huaqiangbei. Backpackers keep leaving, some businesses begin to withdraw their stores, and the consumer electronics industry in Huaqiangbei is no longer as glorious as it once was.

According to media reports, on the day the iPhone 15 was released, a factory in Huaqiangbei obtained the original Apple Type-C interface data cable and began research. After years of development, "fast but not broken" has been engraved in Huaqiangbei's genes, and the copycat VisionPro fully embodies this style of play.

Perhaps one day in the near future, Huaqiangbei will come up with a copycat VisionPro with better quality and more complete functions. But at a time when Apple is striving to transform in the field of MR, Huaqiangbei's copycat industry may also start to think about its future.